#wethedata
Right now, data may be what we intentionally share, or what is gathered about us – the product of surveillance and tracking. We are the customer, but our data are the product. How do we balance our anxiety around data…
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Category Sustainability
Big Data and personal data for behavioral analysis and behavioral change
In a broader article on Big Data and privacy, the New York Times writes about the work of Alex Pentland, a computational social scientist, director of the Human Dynamics Lab at the M.I.T., and academic adviser to the World Economic…
Sustainable living and behavioural change
A Unilever sponsored sustainability supplement to The Guardian contains a short articles by Dan Lockton that is worth exploring. Design for sustainability: making green behaviour easy describes how design can enable sustainable behaviour by understanding everyday needs rather than treating…
Book: Present Shock – When Everything Happens Now
Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff Current Hardcover March 2013, 216 pages [Amazon] Abstract This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, explains award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, but we don’t seem to have any time in…
What form of behaviour change does climate change call for?
Jonathan Rowson @Jonathan_Rowson, who leads the RSA Social Brain Centre, recently gave a 15 minute presentation on the Social Brain Centre’s emerging ideas relating to behaviour change in the context of Climate Change. The title was: “What kind of behaviour…
The problem with our data obsession
To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov Public Affairs Book, 2013 432 pages [Amazon] Abstract In the very near future, “smart†technologies and “big data†will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions…
First outputs from Intel research centre on sustainable connected cities
The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities – a cooperation between University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and Intel – was launched in May 2012, which a focus on how to enable future cities to be more…
Small, local, open and connected: resilient systems and sustainable qualities
How do we design a resilient socio-technical system, asks Ezio Manzini in Design Observer. “Let’s look to natural systems; their tolerance of breakdowns and their adaptation capacity (that is, their capability of sustaining over time) may give us direction. As…
Redesigning public services so they can actually help people
Although I don’t agree with the implicit meaning of this Fast Company title (i.e. that public services currently do not help people – whereas the real issue is the degree of impact), I am always excited to hear the latest…
Social Innovation Europe Magazine interviews Ezio Manzini
For more than two decades Ezio Manzini has been working in the field of design for sustainability. Recently, he focused his interests on social innovation –he started, and currently coordinates, DESIS, an international network on design for social innovation and…
Dan Hill’s critique of the smart cities movement
Dan Hill (of CityofSound, ARUP, Sitra and now Fabrica fame) is not only extremely prolific, but his writing is also very much to the point. His latest Smart City (or better “Smart Citizen”) manifesto is a case in point. Weighing…
Telling “Stories”: Experientia designs domestic energy consumption monitors (videos)
Videos showcasing two sustainability-related projects are now on Experientia’s YouTube channel. The videos, showing the Ecofamilies and Stories projects respectively, both focus on monitoring domestic energy consumption in different areas of Europe. The Ecofamilies video (in French with our English…
Helsinki Design Lab closing in June 2013
Marco Steinberg, who directs the strategic design efforts of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, announced last week that Sitra’s Helsinki Design Lab will close in June 2013. Helsinki Design Lab is an initiative by Sitra to advance strategic design as…
A sustainable building promotes pro-environmental behavior
A Sustainable Building Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: An Observational Study on Food Disposal by Wu DW, DiGiacomo A, Kingstone A PLoS ONE 8(1): e53856. doi:10.1371 – January 2013 In order to develop a more sustainable society, the wider public will need…
No one likes a city that’s too smart
This week London hosts a jamboree of computer geeks, politicians, and urban planners from around the world. At the Urban Age conference, they will discuss the latest whizz idea in high tech, the “smart city”. “But,” writes Richard Sennett in…
In safe hands
Clare Brass is the team leader of Sustain at the Royal College of Art in London, where she presides over a radical initiative to make sustainability a core issue for all students, whether they are studying architecture, textiles, visual communications…
Lugano conference on digital experiences in smart cities
On Saturday 27 October, the Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano will host the 4th edition of the UXconference. The 2012 edition of the conference, which is organised by the Sketchin team, will focus on the relationship between digital services and…
BMW’s electric experience
Martin C. Pedersen reports in a long article for Metropolis Magazine on the 2014 BMW i3, the company’s first fully electric vehicle aimed at city driving. The article focuses on how BMW’s new business strategy is all based on the…
User experience in the age of sustainability
Designers, as makers of products and services, are key stewards of our planet because the products and services we design influence the ways in which people live, argues Kem Kramer in an article for Johnny Holland. “What we design, how…
Smart cities in Italy and France
The European House-Ambrosetti, an Italian economic think tank/management consultancy and organisers of the very prestigious annual international economic conference in the Italian town of Cernobbio, has – in partnership with ABB Italy – published a report on Smart Cities in…